This invention relates to a test support system, a test support method, and a program. In particular, this invention relates to a technique to support testing of a program for performing a function in a mobile object, such as a mobile information terminal or a car navigation terminal.
In testing a program, a program developer runs a subject program under various conditions to check whether the program works properly as required under the various conditions. The testing may take 50% of the overall time to develop a program and is burdensome.
For example, JP 2007-52703 A discloses a test scenario generation program that makes a computer execute a test scenario generation method that generates a test scenario for use in verification of an application involving screen change.
This program makes a computer execute a design information acquisition step that acquires design information of the application, a test scenario template information generation step that generates test scenario template information having a part of information of the test scenario based on the design information and a previously set generation rule, and a test scenario setting step that sets the result of the setting that has been made for the test scenario template information based on the design information as the test scenario.
In the meanwhile, there exist functions using the GPS (Global Positioning System) or other position measurement system utilizing WiFi™ (Wireless Fidelity) base stations or mobile-phone base stations to perform a certain operation when a mobile phone or a car navigation terminal is positioned at a specific geographic point or is in a specific moving state. For example, functions such as generating an alarm about a dangerous spot and delivering an advertisement are known.
In the technology of car navigation systems, it is demanded to provide a car navigation system customized in accordance with user requirements. Various functions are implemented to meet various user requirements; each of the various functions needs to be tested.
In testing such functions, it is difficult to take a mobile phone or a car navigation terminal to a specific place to conduct the testing under various conditions. For this reason, the testing of a program function prepares dummy data of positional information to emulate the behavior at the position and inputs the dummy data to the subject program.
However, in the circumstance where developers individually create dummy data necessary for the testing, the developers have to study all possible test cases and further, have to create test cases to create necessary and sufficient dummy data; their workloads are heavy. The method of generating a test scenario according to the aforementioned JP 2007-52703 A does not consider the conditions related to geographic positions; consequently, a program configured to execute certain processing depending on the geographic position might perform a different operation from the actual one during the testing.